


you want a better story, who wouldn't?

by whenthewindhowlsitdoessogently



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Funerals, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Set in S4, Unhealthy Relationships, jon elias basira and melanie are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27934087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whenthewindhowlsitdoessogently/pseuds/whenthewindhowlsitdoessogently
Summary: After Martin's mother dies, there is grief, entwined with the beginning of something new that comes with the lilt in Peter's mouth, like the waves crashing on the shoreline. Martin wonders what his mouth would taste like, he wonders and he wonders.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Peter Lukas
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	you want a better story, who wouldn't?

**Author's Note:**

> this is written for Petermartin week 2020, for day 7 (funeral and comfort). i know i am EXTREMELY late and i apologise for that. i hope u enjoy this mess !!
> 
> the title is a siken quote!
> 
> if i need to tag anything lmk!!!

The sheets smell of emptiness. After. Martin sits there longer than he should but everything is silent and it can be so easy to get lost in unholy silence.

His fingers clench around the sheets even though they're not hers. They changed the sheets his mother died on and inside some part of him that came alive after her death, he wishes they wouldn't have. Just so he could have seen the evidence of it, of her life, because he didn’t really get to see the reality of it, didn’t really get to see _her,_ not when it mattered. 

It doesn’t matter now, not really, when the entire world is close to collapsing in on itself and it’s all he can do to keep going is to close his eyes and pretend the breath in his lungs is his last. It’s not. He knows that. It's not that simple, nothing ever is, he doesn’t get to choose, he never has. He gets pushed and pulled into every direction there is and nobody tells him what to do about it. He gets handed a sliver of hope twirled in a web when he sees Elias go to jail and then Jon goes to the hospital and stays, Tim does not come back but Peter arrives.

Peter arrives, shrouded in a swirl of blue, the ocean clinging to him as if he were the only thing to ever love it and Martin wonders what a man like that would do if he were in love. 

When he received the call telling him his mother had died, it did not surprise him. The desk his hands rested on did not blur in front of his eyes and he did not feel helpless. That is what he tells himself now. The truth is, like most things in his life, he doesn’t quite remember what it was like when he got the call. Memory seems to slip from his fingers like sand, like salt in the ocean, it always has. The truth is that he doesn’t remember if he cried, or if he wished Jon was there, the truth is that he remembers that Peter _was._ He remembers that Peter had looked up from his desk the moment Martin had picked up the phone, that Peter had looked at him, _through_ him, nothing in the spill of his eyes other than the roar of the ocean and Martin had wondered, then, what it would be like to be loved by someone like that. 

He doesn’t wonder now, the proof of his mother’s existence laid out in front of him with nothing to show for it but a single box that contains no photos of him, or her. He doesn’t wonder now, what good would it do? What good does any of it do? 

___

After the funeral, Melanie and Basira touch his shoulder, his arm, they don’t tell him that it gets better, that they’re there for him, no place for lies this close to death. They don’t stay long and Martin doesn’t ask them to. 

He goes back to the institute, he has nothing better to do and does not think about his mother, does not think about the hollow space in his chest that used to feel like a heart, does not think. 

“It was a quiet service.” Peter’s voice rings out and Martin turns lifts his face from his hands, sudden, sees Peter leaning against the door, the space behind seeming darker than it was, all the light concentrating on his face as if making a home out of it and Martin wonders how a man like that could ever be lonely, how a man like that who illuminates every space he steps foot in and spews darkness behind him could ever be lonely. Martin knows it doesn’t work like that, knows he sometimes sees Peter as more than what Peter is, a god perhaps, or the devil. Or both. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to.

“I didn’t see you there.” He says, voice steady as a pebble bouncing over the waves. 

“No,” Peter says, walks forward, hand resting on the chair opposite Martin's own. “I didn’t want to alarm Basira and Melanie.”

Martin thinks, _don’t lie to me, not when I know you’re doing it, not when I know you don’t even mean it._ He says, “it takes more than one avatar to alarm them.”

Peter laughs, it’s a near thing to a howl of pain, Martin thinks, every time he’s heard Peter laugh he thinks it sounds as if he’s been in pain. Martin doesn’t know what to do with that thought, except that it makes him feel helpless, makes him want to lay his hands on the grounds, wrists facing the sky and ask whoever is listening for some sort of penance, for some sort of relief, however underserved, for him, for Jon and perhaps for Peter. 

Peter doesn’t say anything, sits down on the chair, his movements quiet, muted and yet Martin can’t quite look away. 

“Was she a good mother?” Peter says and Martin’s throat closes up, only slightly, only enough to make his eyes blur and his hands shake, only enough to make the sleeping remnants of anger and grief in his chest wake up and breathe as if freed from death. 

“What are you doing here?” He replies, hopes Peter can’t hear it all in his voice, hopes, hopes.

With the way Peter smiles, all teeth, no sharpness, makes Martin think that he _knows,_ that he knows everything Martin never told anyone, everything he keeps close to his chest, tied up in strings of secrets he wraps around his veins. Martin wonders if Peter’ll tug at them. 

“This is my office.” Peter says.

“No, _this_ is my office.”

“Who ever cared about titles anyway.”

“Well, if you don’t care about them, why not make me head of the Magnus Institute.” 

Peter laughs, and Martin pretends it doesn’t go straight to his chest, pretends it doesn’t _hurt_ in a way he doesn’t know how to recognise, like falling from a cliff except without the knowledge that the ground will be beneath you, something he can’t name. 

“You don’t want that.”

“Do you want it,” Martin says, he feels brave, now in the dead of the night, with London quiet outside the walls of the Institute, he feels brave, as if nothing could hurt him, them, as if all the world is waiting for the next moment when he feels alive again, as if that moment is near. 

Peter looks at him, right at him, and he feels as if he’s been splayed open, as if someone took his heart and kept it on the desk between them. 

“Was she a good mother?”

 _This_ , Martin knows, he knows deflection, knows this game, has played it most of his life. 

“Are you happy.” He says, moulds his voice to fit inside the hush they’ve suddenly created, into the illusion that nothing matters but the space between their hands resting on the desk. It means something, Martin thinks suddenly, desperately, it needs to mean something. 

“Martin,” Peter sings, his name sounding like a jewel left at the bottom of the sea to rot in Peter’s mouth and it makes something old blossom anew in his chest. 

“What is Elias to you?” Martin says, feels braver than he has in a long time, something about the wind outside, the way Peter’s fingers don’t still on the desk, inch closer to his. 

Peter leans back, lips twisting into something too grieving to be a smile but Martin doesn't know what else he could call it. 

“What will you do if Jon never wakes up?” _Oh_ , Martin thinks, Peter’s eyes fixed on him as if he’s a lighthouse in the dark and _oh,_ Martin thinks, they’re both hovering on the edges of something— something unfamiliar, redemption or punishment, or something in between, something sacred that sticks to the hollows of his chest like weeds on the pavement, stubborn and undead, undead, like his own heart, like every breath he takes. They’re both hovering on the edge, Martin wonders who’ll push first.

“What will you do if or when Elias comes back?”

“I always knew you were something else.” Peter says, laughs, his mouth open wide and Martin thinks if he tried, Peter could swallow him whole, and leave nothing behind. 

“Am I a monster?” Martin says, whatever is left of his heart beating hummingbird fast in his chest and he wonders if Peter can hear it, wonders if everyone in the world can hear how fucking terrified he is, still, no matter how hard he tries not to be. There is age-old fear clinging to his brittle bones and he doesn’t know how to live without it, he doesn’t know how to live with it. 

Peter lets his fingers flit closer towards Martin’s, lets them touch the tips of his fingers for a second, two, until Martin flips his hand over, palm facing the sky and Peter traces his palm with his fingers, they’re softer than Martin expected, calloused but not split apart and it makes something catch in his throat, heavy as stone and unrelenting and he swallows around it, hopes Peter doesn’t catch it.

Peter’s eyes fall to his throat, for a second, quick and sharp and it makes Martin feel _seen_ in a way he’s never felt before, and he realises how easily intoxicating it could get, being flayed open under Peter’s gaze. Peter wouldn’t be gentle, Martin knows, he doesn’t know Peter would do with secrets, if he would poke and prod at them with hungry eyes and careful hands like Elias or if he would simply keep them to himself, guarding with all that he is, nothing makes a man lonelier than nursing secrets, Martin knows. 

“Would that be the worst thing?” Peter says, his voice level, floating in the space between them. In the trembling unsilence that falls after, Martin wonders what would happen if the world swallowed them whole just then, if he would forget Peter, if he would ever be able to forget Peter.

He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t need to. 

When Peter gets up, Martin follows. 

___

Outside, darkness falls over London. The crescent moon in midnight in the London sky is nothing he doesn’t know but it feels new as he stands next to Peter. This is a sky he knows, this is a city he knows, this is a man he does not know. His mother died today and he doesn't know if the hitch in his chest is grief or his nearness to Peter.

In the tender hum of the night all he can see of Peter's face is from the silent orange glow of his cigarette dangling like dead flowers from his mouth. He looks beautiful like this, Martin thinks, as all unholy things do. 

When Martin was 16, a boy kissed him under a tree and didn't stop kissing him until he was breathless from it. Martin wonders if that’s what kissing Peter would feel like, if he’d feel breathless from it, floating from it or if it would feel like entrapment. He wonders if anything in the world wouldn’t feel like entrapment anymore. 

Peter offers him a cigarette, he takes it, their hands brushing for a moment and he thinks if time could stop, it would stop now, to cement the certainty of whatever he feels for Peter, in all its bludgeoning intensity. Martin doesn’t know what to do with it, and it makes his hands shake. 

When he looks at Peter, in all his tall glory, Martin knows nothing good will come of this, of him, of them. When he kisses Peter, both of their mouths tasting of ash and leftover grief, it feels like the world has already ended an they're standing in the embers of its death. Peter laughs, head thrown back, half-lit cigarette dangling from his hand, the moonlight falling on him just so making him look like one of those monsters in children’s stories, the ones with gentle eyes and sharpened teeth they hide behind rose tinted words except Martin isn’t a child anymore. He knows who the monster really is and he’s choosing to walk towards him with palms raised to the sky in what he hopes isn’t supplication. 

“I’m going home.” Martin says, the words getting stuck somewhere on their way out, and he feels tired, all of a sudden, weary down to his bones and his mother’s dead and there is almost no one left in the world that he can claim to have loved but Peter’s mouth tasted like the ocean, like getting lost at sea and finding the will to stay. It’s been so long since Martin has wanted to stay somewhere. 

Peter brushes his hand once, says, “I won’t walk back with you.”

“I know.” Martin replies, tangles his fingers with Peter’s for a moment, feels their weight, the promise of what is yet to come, things he possibly can’t imagine, none of them good, none of them worth imagining. He feels comforted that Peter will be near him, despite knowing that Peter will be the orchestrator when worse comes to worst. But Martin can pretend, can pretend that the hand he is holding belongs to a man who isn’t a monster, a man who could love him. 

He sighs, untangles their fingers, pretends the emptiness he feels is just that: emptiness and not whatever is left of his heart beating in tune to Peter’s empty breaths. Nothing good will ever come of this, and Martin is almost thankful for that. 

“Goodbye, Martin.” Peter sings, as Martin walks away, doesn’t look back. 

“Goodbye, Peter.” Martin says, looks only ahead. At night, most things feel invincible, tomorrow morning he’ll have to face the truth of everything that knocks at his door with sharpened blades but for now, he can revel in the feel of Peter’s lips on his, of his fingers in his own, and pretend that all of this will mean something if, when the world ends. For now, he can pretend that there is no tomorrow after this, that this hurt in his chest is only for this moment. For today, he pretends, when tomorrow comes, he will light that bridge on fire and pave his way onwards with ashes in his mouth and embers in his fingers.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!!! leave a comment or kudos if u feel so inclined, they make my day! <3
> 
> my other acc is sapphoslover so head on to there if u want more tma!!
> 
> have a lovely day u wonderful folks


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